Rise Mzansi Youth and Student Chapters coordinator, Lawrence Manaka has urged the youth to register to vote in their numbers and use the power of their vote to bring real, lasting change in 2024.
On September 29, in the build-up to the party’s policy conference “People’s Convention”, hundreds of young people, particularly students, marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to raise their issues facing the public across the country.
According to Manaka, the march was to remind President Cyril Ramaphosa of the failed promises he has made to the young people since “aimlessly occupying the highest office in the Republic.”
"For young people of South Africa to rise, President Ramaphosa must fall," he said, adding that this was the rallying call of hundreds of youth under the banner of Rise Mzansi Youth and Student Chapters marching for all young South Africans.
They delivered their memorandum of demands to the Union Buildings with hopes that their grievances would be heard.
Manaka said that Ramaphosa’s government has failed in seven critical areas that, left unattended, will continue to stunt the development and well-being of young people.
The critical areas are as follows:
1. Quality basic education: Today, more than 81% of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning.
2. A fruitful country: Unemployment and crime have increased.
3. Youth Unemployment: Today, the youth unemployment rate sits at over 60%.
4. A poverty-free country: 18.2 million people in South Africa live in extreme poverty. Meaning that they live on less than R36,50 a day.
5. Ending rolling blackouts: Rolling blackouts have only gotten worse, while the price of electricity has gone up.
6. Eradicating gender-based violence and femicide: It is still the tragic norm that over 15,000 women were assaulted in the first quarter of the year, and a total of 969 women were killed in the same period.
7. NSFAS crisis and the missing middle: It cannot be the norm that nine months into the academic calendar there are still over 11,284 appeals that are still pending, and thousands of students have still not received their first allowance of the year.
"We deserve a better government; we need a reset that ushers in new leaders with new answers that will build the South Africa young people deserve," he said.
Manaka said this was their generational mission as Warriors of Freedom to fight for change with their new mission to shape the country’s future.
IOL Politics